Thread: "Buy it now" button, question and civility

I sympathize with the need to ask questions but OTOH all of us have seen the ebay "immediate payment required" auctions. You mouse click the buy it now and it takes you to the paypal login and tells you that while you are taking care of business someone else can buy the item.

At least with SRP I would figure that if I bought something that proved to be unsatisfactory to me the seller would accept the item back and issue a refund less shipping. Reminds me of what a friend of mine was fond of saying,"All things come to he who waits ....... unless he waits too long."

I don't see a need to change things.. The buy-it button is convenient for both parties and the seller has the option to allow it or not. I've done both with items I've sold since they both have pluses and minuses and I'm not sure yet which option I like better.

It is really up to the seller how they want to conduct their business and their choices have an effect on their future transactions. For example there are a couple of people I am not going to conduct business with because they have handled previous interactions rather poorly.

As a buyer I state my intentions clearly and have always completed my end as soon as possible, which happens to be within hours.
I usually try to be extremely flexible as a seller, but I can understand if somebody doesn't have the ability or inclination to wait for the buyers to make up their mind. There are all kinds of situations which can greatly affect our options.

What is unacceptable to me is lack of communication and changing rules in the middle, i.e. if you have stated you will ship internationally, you cannot pass over the first people who have committed to the sale to sell to somebody local, unless you have stated such preference explicitly. Or if you say you will purchase something you should either pay as soon as possible (generally I expect within a day), or let the seller know you are unable to do so. That's the kind of behavior I am not interested in dealing with.

On few occasions I have removed the buy-it button upon the request of a potential buyer, but with the understanding that they only have very limited time to make up their mind, and the subseuent prospective buyers know exactly what is going on.

It's not really all that hard. Few situations may need a judgment call, but there's nothing wrong with that, as those calls reflect on the person making them and are quite helpful for future decisions.

Originally Posted by Chris L

I could have sworn at some point early on in the roll-out of the new classifieds format (versus the old BST that most of us remember) it was specified at the moderator level that ANY item listed for sale in the SRP classifieds MUST offer international shipping. I believe IIRC the rationale was that SRP has a worldwide membership and the classifieds is not meant to be a free version of Ebay. Maybe SRP can clarify this again.

I could be wrong, but I thought AFDavis had stated that classifieds must allow for international shipping?

Chris L

Nope. International shipping is not mandatory. The classifieds has to be able to allow you to choose (which is what Alan meant IIRC).

It is up to the members to determine how and to where they ship.
For example, I cannot insure shipments to certain countries, so it is up to me how I deal with that. I could charge an additional insurance fee to cover my risk, or refuse to ship to said country, or agree with the buyer that it is his risk and not mine. There are way too much variables for us to draft up rules.

I would not change a thing. The classifieds section is an excellent service for forum members and it needs to be kept simple. Anything beyond the "first come, first served" rule would quickly make it deteriorate and shut down.

No false entitlements, please.

To be honest I preferred the BST forum format but I really like the 'buy it now' button. It is just so convenient to be able to pull the trigger immediately if that is what I want to do. The issue of someone beating me to the punch is there but that is the case with the old format too. Whoever posted "PM sent" was the buyer.